Data Consolidation: Corral Your Data
What is Data Consolidation?
Data Consolidation is just a modern-day cattle round-up.
In the old days of the American West, roundups were a critical part of ranching. Roundups were the process of gathering and corralling all the cattle grazing in a specific area. In the Open Range Cattle Era, there were no fences to keep livestock contained in a pasture, and they were free to roam for miles and miles. Cowboys had to ride this land atop horseback in search of the cattle. These roundups took place twice a year: in the spring and fall. The spring roundups were an opportunity to gather all the calves to get them branded and counted so the rancher had an estimate of how many calves were born that year. The fall roundups were used to determine which of the steers were ready to ship out to market or sell to meat packing plants.
Data Consolidation is the corralling, combining, and storing of varied data in a single place. Think of your data as cattle. Right now, your data could be roaming 4 different pastures (Excel sheets, ERP, CRM, Custom Database). You’d have to send a cowboy out to pasture to obtain the customer preference data you’re looking for … and another cowboy to a different pasture to fetch advertising insights!
Now, imagine the benefits of having your data in a single repository. Your cattle have already been roundup; they’re all in one place. You don’t have to send anyone to collect information on your behalf. You can see the customer preference data right next to advertising insights. You can even discern the effect of advertising on customer preferences! When all of your data is consolidated in one place, it’s easier to see (and manage) all the cogs of the machine – which are running smoothly, and which need some oiling.
Why is Data Consolidation important?
Data Consolidation is important because it enables businesses to streamline their data resources, identify patterns/trends, and discover insights in multiple types of data.
When data resides in multiple places, or is input by multiple people, the different variations often get muddled. It can become difficult to distinguish which information is correct if it’s not all uniform. This can cause major lag time or inaccuracies in your operations. But when your data is consolidated into a single source of truth, it leaves no room for discrepancies and eliminates the time it would take to resolve them.
In the same vein, if your data is dispersed across multiple systems, it’s more challenging to see the big picture. Think of it like a jigsaw puzzle that you have yet to assemble. Your data is useless until you’re able to piece it all together, draw connections, and pull insights. When it’s all in one place, it’s a lot easier to do the aforementioned. There’s even software, like IBM Planning Analytics and Jedox, that will highlight the patterns and pull the insights for you after data consolidation!
Conclusion:
The bottom line is that data consolidation will save you time, save you money, and spare you the headaches. Data41 can help you determine the infrastructure that best suits your organization and its needs, then create a one-stop-shop with all your data. It’ll show you areas for improvement, promote new opportunities, and offer lucrative insights.
Need your data consolidated and corralled? We’re your cowboys. Contact us for a free discovery consultation!
Related Resources:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/da/tnpm/1.4.2?topic=data-aggregation
https://www.ibm.com/topics/data-management
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/data-guide/relational-data/etl
